The Former Priest Whodunit

Crime Does Pay For Mystery Writer William X. Kienzle

In William X. Kienzle`s best-selling mysteries, there always is time to digress. All of Detroit, for instance, may be obsessed with the ``Red Hat``

murders. For days, decapitated human heads--their features frozen in horror

--have begun showing up atop Catholic church statuary. But to Kienzle, a former priest, this is merely an excuse to present a scene in which nuns at the Sacred Heart convent are mending clean laundry before returning it to the seminarians.

The nuns, Kienzle assures us, consider this task to be recreation, and they`re discussing the murders as they sit and knit. Sister Clotilde, in her 80s, believes that G.K. Chesterton`s sleuth, Father Brown, would have solved the case by now, but Sister Dulcilia, 65, thinks it`s too early. As she speaks, she searches assiduously for a button to replace one missing from a brown shirt. Not finding a suitable button, she begins sewing shut the buttonhole.

The nuns express varying theories about the Red Hat killings, but they are certain that the murderer cannot be a Catholic. Sister Paulita listens as she patches a T-shirt that has been patched so often it is beginning to resemble Joseph`s coat of many colors. From time to time, Paulita looks in the laundry basket, adjusts her glasses, and studies an article of clothing.

``Have you told the police all this?` Paulita asks Sister Clotilde about their theories.

Clotilde laughs softly. ``Oh, the police don`t need any help from an old lady,`` she says.

Paulita again peers into the laundry basket. She seems puzzled. She reaches into the basket and extracts a spanking clean athletic supporter. She studies the laundry number: 302.

Sister Paulita sighs, takes the athletic supporter to the board and irons it. Before placing it into the laundry bag marked 302, she writes a note in her characteristic tiny, precise handwriting. She pins the note to the supporter.

``These undershorts,`` reads the note, ``are beyond repair.``

``I had been waiting for 20 years,`` says Bill Kienzle, laughing, ``to get that story in a book. All us priests were forbidden--absolutely forbidden --to put jockstraps in the laundry. But sure enough, somebody did, and that`s what happened.

``And one nun routinely would sew up the buttonholes. I still have a white shirt with neither buttons nor holes. I don`t know what was going through her head. Perhaps it had something to do with the natural laws: No button, no hole.``

As more than a million readers have learned to their delight, Kienzle, who left the priesthood in 1974 after 20 years, is a font of funny stories. He has seized an unusual pulpit to present what he calls ``my little morality plays.`` He did so by creating one of the most likable and authentic of all recent sleuths--the shy, sly Father Bob Koesler--whose exploits into crime and insights into parish life have continued in seven gossipy and cozy mysteries. In 1978, Koesler stumbled onto a clue in the murder of a Detroit nun. From this he was drawn into the investigation of what turned into a series of murders of priests and nuns, all of whom were found with a black rosary entwined in their fingers. From this enigma grew a close friendship with Inspector Walter Koznicki, chief of homicide for the Detroit Police Department.

Since solving ``The Rosary Murders,`` Koesler has, through what Kienzle calls ``a sort of recurrent kismet`` been drawn into similar investigations

``Shadow of Death,`` ``Kill and Tell`` and the new one, ``Sudden Death``

(Andrews, McMeel & Parker).

When a person or persons unknown start bashing priests in the confessonal or butchering nuns in the bathtub, Koesler must get involved. At other times, the murder victims were found in Catholic churches, stashed in Catholic cemeteries, or merely belonged to Koesler`s parish.

Structured in classic mystery style, the Koesler mysteries come replete with clues for the reader and a neat solution, plus a twist at the end. The series seems destined to provide a tidy annuity for its creator.

``Thank heavens for that,`` Kienzle says. ``I was 45 when I got out and found that I had to make an honest living for the first time. That was a cultural shock of major impact. When you`re a priest, everything is done for you. Suddenly, nobody`s doing anything.

``Now, though, I must confess that I love going into bookstores to see how I`m doing and sneaking into libraries to look me up.``

It is a jolt to read about Koesler, who is not the type to raise his voice let alone tote a gun, and then meet Kienzle. Rarely does life mirror art so directly.

``Koesler is me, and I`m him,`` Kienzle cheerfully admits. ``I`m still functioning as a priest through him. Koesler`s in his mid-50s, tall, grayish, balding, bifocaled, fighting a midriff bulge. He was ordained in 1954 and edited the Catholic newspaper in Detroit for 12 years. (Kienzle edited the Michigan Catholic.) Now Koesler has a suburban parish in Dearborn Heights: St. Anselm`s.